its about par with a 9600GT and under the 8800GT. however, these things like overclocking and i got very close to the performance of a 8800GT. 9600gso is a rebranded 8800gs which are harvested 8800GT which is renamed to 9800GT. harvest meaning some parts of the 8800GT failed so instead of thowing them away, nvidia disables the "broken" parts and sells them at a lower price. amd, intel, ati and everyone does this.

there are many more, just google 9600gso or 8800gs. and as you can see, it runs circles around the 8600gts or 9500gt.

last two things, make sure you get the 96SP verison that comes in 384 or 768 version. the other ones suck badly. also, pny rebates come really fast. about a month or two max. just take care and follow instructions to a T. i also usually get a certificate of mailing for $1.50 so that why they cant lie and say they never got it.

lastly, if you real firepower, you can get the ati 4850 for about 100 bucks and thats about the same performance as an nvidia gts250 (9800gtx+,8800gts 512mb, i kno nvidia is retarded). but anything over a 9800gt is overkill because you will be cpu limited unless you overclock till 3.0ghz and get another 2GB of ram.

its about par with a 9600GT and under the 8800GT. however, these things like overclocking and i got very close to the performance of a 8800GT. 9600gso is a rebranded 8800gs which are harvested 8800GT which is renamed to 9800GT. harvest meaning some parts of the 8800GT failed so instead of thowing them away, nvidia disables the "broken" parts and sells them at a lower price. amd, intel, ati and everyone does this.

there are many more, just google 9600gso or 8800gs. and as you can see, it runs circles around the 8600gts or 9500gt.

last two things, make sure you get the 96SP verison that comes in 384 or 768 version. the other ones suck badly. also, pny rebates come really fast. about a month or two max. just take care and follow instructions to a T. i also usually get a certificate of mailing for $1.50 so that why they cant lie and say they never got it.

lastly, if you real firepower, you can get the ati 4850 for about 100 bucks and thats about the same performance as an nvidia gts250 (9800gtx+,8800gts 512mb, i kno nvidia is retarded). but anything over a 9800gt is overkill because you will be cpu limited unless you overclock till 3.0ghz and get another 2GB of ram.

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+1. endlesszeal recommended the 9600GSO to me also last year when I built my comp, and it has performed great. I can go through large CAD drawings and models with no lag, and I've played a few games with decent performance. I'm not picky about games as long as the performance isn't too bad, but it seems to keep up just enough to where motion looks fluid enough for me. The frame rate isn't the best, but oh well, for the price it's a great card.

the 9600gso runs games great on 1024x1280. most games decently on 1650 and anything above that, it will struggle. of course it depends on the game as well. and if you get the 768mb, it would allow some head room for AA.

another option is play the waiting game. ATI will be releasing their 5XXX series very soon and Nvidia will follow suit with GT300. This again may create another price change since the 5870 is rumored to be as fast as Nvidia's fastest GTX295 for half the price.

Either way, you cant go wrong

Dustin, have you tried overclocking your card? They respond very well to it because it uses the same 1000mhz DDR3 as the 8800/9800GT. I have gotten mine up to 950mhz and my core up to 620mhz. I havent pushed the shaders or upped the voltage, but i feel i may have some head room left.

If you decide to overclock, i recommend the following tools:
-EVGA Precision Tool or RivaTuner. Dont do both
-3DMark06.

I personally used Rivatuner to change the freq. and monitor my temps. I also jacked up the fan to 90% max to ensure my card doesnt exceed 90C. The lower the better. I got around 70C full load with my fan setting. And I ran 3DMark06 to look for artifacts.

It takes a little patience and time, but I thought it was fun and boosted my performance.

i just came across this today. this is a very current bench mark of all the cards we mentioned and then some. also, it includes top titles from last gen and current gen ie FEAR and Far Cry 2. the results speak for themselves.

the gt240 uses GDDR5 while the GDDR3 thus the higher "effective" clock rate. but the GTS' bigger bus width, more cuda-cores and a much higher core clock destroys the gt240. also, 512mb of ram is plenty if you're gaming under 1650x resolutions.

the onyl down side to the gts250 is itll suck a considerable amount of more power.